


History Found

by 1000PaperCranes



Series: Rabbit Canon [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Call It "Canon Plausible", Gen, I'm Bad At Tagging, No Beta: We die like mne, Sirs Talked About But Not Appearing in this Fic: Sirius Black and Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew, Stormy Weather, barely
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:55:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26132266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1000PaperCranes/pseuds/1000PaperCranes
Summary: After Black's escape, Severus broods over how it could all have gone so wrong.  Sybill interrupts him.  Typical.
Relationships: Severus Snape & Sybill Trelawney
Series: Rabbit Canon [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1897585
Kudos: 10





	History Found

Severus sat by the window in the darkened staff room, staring out into the night. How could it all be true? Then again, if he were honest with himself, it did make more sense. Pettigrew had always been a sycophant. _If_ he set up Black to take the fall… _If_ he was truly alive… _If_ he were powerful enough to blow up a street… _If_ he somehow managed to become an Animagus…

It was a lot of _ifs_. Too many. But Severus was thinking of _ifs_. And _if_ it were all true —stipulate to it all for a moment— _if_ it were all true, it all made sense. Pettigrew had always been a worm. Objectively, he was nastier than both Black and Potter, and always had been. He was certainly skeevy enough to sleep in the beds and clothes of tweenage boys —like there wasn’t something inherently wrong with that— to preserve his own skin. That alone made him worse than Lupin; Severus could understand wanting to be free and in control, even though he disagreed violently with acting on that instinct when you yourself were uncontrollably dangerous.

Theoretically… _If_ Black’s story was true, Pettigrew was worse than Lupin. _If_ it was true, Pettigrew had done all of it on purpose. That Severus would believe.

It was still a lot of _ifs_.

Severus stared out into the midnight thunderstorm raging outside. How could it all be true? 

Why did a part of him want it to be?

“Penny for your thoughts?”

Severus met Sybill Trelawney’s gaze reflected in the leaded glass. “Fall out of your mystical cloud?” he inquired of her very normal tone and lack of clattering jewelry.

“You don’t seem in the mood for cheering up.” Sybill crossed the room, curling herself into the chair opposite him. She turned to the window. “Tell me about it?” she asked the reflection of her peacock blue nightgown.

Lightning flashed.

Thunder rolled.

“You heard about Black?”

“Yes.”

Severus swallowed a sigh. Sybill Trelawney was impossible to read. 

“Do you believe it?”

“I haven’t decided.” Sybill pulled her spectacles off, cleaning them. “Have you decided?”

Severus’ first instinct was to jump up and insist that Black was a monster. He hesitated. “No,” he admitted.

Sybill placed her spectacles back on her nose. Her enlarged eyes flicked from one fat drop of water splattering on the windowpane to the next.

Severus looked past the glass. The thunderclouds lit themselves from within, flashing varying shades of purple and gray. “I was there.”

“You were a lot of places.”

Involuntarily, Severus smirked. “I was at Godric’s Hollow,” he clarified. Sybill Trelawney had never told anyone she had seen him in the back of the Hog’s Head so many years ago. It was long past time he settled any doubts she had about it. “My year mates during school were incredibly dangerous.” Severus looked at his shoes, battling back the memories of his terrifying time as a Slytherin student. “For my own protection, I pretended to adopt their attitudes and ambitions.” Ashamed, he whispered, “Sometimes, it was more real than I wanted.” 

Sybill placidly watched the trees thrashing in the interrupted blackness beyond the room. Severus collected himself and stared out into the storm, allowing the illusion that he wasn’t really there climb into his head.

“The ideals of the Dark Lord’s manifesto never quite made sense to me, but I wanted to be wherever Dumbledore and his favorites weren’t. And I was angry. Angry at everyone.” Thunder shook the floor, condemning his foolish teenage self. “But I wasn’t stupid.”

It had been a cold, wind-whipped night at the end of Severus’ fourth year when he had snuck out of bed and off the grounds. Dunch was a dilapidated mostly-wizarding town that still creeped him out. He had hidden in the shadows behind the group in the dingy Silenus Inn. Lucius Malfoy and a swarthy man Severus would never see again had extolled upon the favors of the Dark Lord. They had even gone so far as to explain away his name as embracing the role thrust upon him by an unjust society. They promised the power, the inalienable right, to protect oneself from the cruelness of the blind muggles and the tyrannical conformists. 

Severus had eaten it right up, for the most part.

Until the meeting that September. The meeting in Malfoy manner where they had made small talk and discrete plans, and everyone had systematically ignored Severus’ astoundingly uncouth manners. The meeting where he had looked upon the face of Voldemort and known it was all a lie. No one could do that to themselves and _care_.

And no one could look upon that face and _leave_. 

Severus had not taken the mark for years after, but he had known then the only way out was to become an infiltrator, to dismantle the toxic revolution from within. He had dug himself deeper into the cult, hiding in a miserable shroud of blood purist rhetoric and paranoid rage.

“I drove away my only friend.”

“Lily Evans.”

“Yes. I busied myself by honing my spy-craft on my schoolmates.” It had been all rather exhilarating, despite the sucking feeling of being on the edge of a waterfall. “James Potter grew suspicious of me…” Severus trailed off. He couldn’t figure anything out if he weren’t honest, and the truth hardly made the things Potter _had_ done less awful. “He may have been concerned I was trying to kill myself.”

“Was he wrong?”

“Not entirely. I knew full well that I was likely to find a werewolf at the end of the tunnel under the whomping willow when Black told me how to get inside. I only wanted proof, but I was reckless with myself and Potter became aware of it.” Severus considered the rapidness with which Lily and Potter’s relationship had changed. “I know that he covered for me. I assumed it was for Lily’s benefit, but…” Knowing it was different from saying it. “Either way, he definitely knew I was a false supporter of Voldemort.”

And somehow _that_ had eventually salvaged Severus’ own relationship with Lily. 

Temporarily.

Memories leapfrogging out of the past, Severus stared at the intricate outlines of the surrounding turrets revealed by each flicker of wild electricity. Sybill waited for him. If only Severus were that patient.

“By the time we graduated, Voldemort was everywhere, a mad spree in all directions. When I heard the prophecy, I told it to him, hoping to concentrate his efforts, make him more predictable.” The heavens shouted at him. “I had no idea who it would be about, I just hoped it would be few enough families that they could be protected.” Severus scoffed. “Hindsight is wretched.”

A shadow stole across Sybill’s face. “Foresight is worse.”

“I can’t imagine.” He had flogged himself for a dozen years over his failures. He could only guess how much worse it would be trying to piece together slivers of the future with the scant information of the present. It was little wonder that Sybill spent her time weaving those slivers into her own form of amusement. Severus was immensely pleased that that somehow included inciting a frothing rage in Minerva McGonagall.

They stared out the window together for what felt like a very long time.

“You didn’t go with Voldemort to Godric’s Hollow.”

That might have been a question. Sybill might also have seen shards of his fate on that night. Or any other night.

Severus deeply did not want to know what she could tell him. 

“No,” he affirmed. “It turned out that the Potters and the Longbottoms were the only two families that fit the prophecy. That was lucky. If it had been the half dozen or so I’d expected, we probably would have lost them all.”

“Not lucky,” Sybill countered, “that so few people stand in the face of evil.”

They didn’t, did they? 

Did Severus count?

He didn’t want to know.

“I discovered the Dark Lord’s plans. They were far worse than what would eventually happen. I knew those plans were totally beyond my ability to disrupt. I had been in over my head for years, but it wasn’t my life I had put on the line this time. I had to risk trusting Dumbledore.” It was still a gamble, frankly, but Severus had no doubt that he’d thrown in with the better side. “They had already identified the Potters and the Longbottoms and were attempting to protect them. I was sent back to the Dark Lord to run interference.

“I told him that I had found my way into Dumbledore’s confidence. I was tortured for revealing the current plans but managed to convince the Dark Lord that the sacrifice was worth the access I now had.” Crossing his eyes, Severus put on the air of simpering servant. “After all, grand schemes are so complex. The tiniest mistake by one of those blithering idiots would have wrecked the whole thing. Surely, an even more cunning and brilliant plan to destroy those disgusting mudbloods can be devised by my lord’s genius.”

A painful sounding snort cut Severus off. Head buried in her arms, Sybill was shaking with repressed laughter.

“Silence!” Severus hissed, impersonating Voldemort. “You think me comical, girl? I will show you what true power is!”

Sybill wheezed into the armrest, her ears nearly the same shade of burgundy. Beaming, Severus sat back in his plush chair. Pride swelled in him as he watched Sybill wipe tears on her forearm. Severus rarely made people happy. 

After several minutes, Sybill rolled over in her chair, blue-draped legs hanging over one armrest, dusty curls tumbled over the other. She folded her hands over her stomach and grinned at him. The silence stretched out beneath the thunder and when Sybill’s smile had long faded to something comfortable, Severus realized she wasn’t going to say anything. Relief trickled over him and he closed his eyes, relaxing.

Unfortunately, nothing good ever stayed. Eventually, his memories found him. Black’s escape. Lupin’s revised history. The Hollow. _Spying_.

The room seemed even darker when Severus opened his eyes. The flickering light of the weak summer fire glinted gold off Sybill’s hair. It gave a broad shimmer as she turned solemn attention to him. If Severus hadn’t known better, he would have sworn she was reading his mind. Whether Sybill was reading his body or his future was another matter entirely.

Absently, Severus rubbed his arm. “I managed for about eight months before I collapsed. Lily convinced me to rest, to take a secret hiatus from spying.” Severus looked out the window and hated himself. He could have done so much more if he had just slept for a week on the Weasley’s couch where he had woken up. “She took me home as a pet rabbit for her son. I’d never met Harry before.”

Sybill raised a teasing brow at him. “A rabbit?”

He showed her. She did not touch him or coo at him. Severus reversed himself. It was hard to think as a rabbit. 

It was addictive to get a break from thinking. 

“I remember the four months I was with them, but it’s like remembering dreams: mostly nonsense and feelings. We moved frequently until Dumbledore smuggled us into the haunted house in Godric’s Hollow.”

“Amity, Elwyn, and Imala Smoote.”

Severus nodded. The three little girls had burned the house to timbers one afternoon several hundred years ago. They had been playing and still were. “I don’t know what happened to them.”

“They died,” Sybill said baldly, subtly implying that Severus was an idiot.

“Obviously.” Severus found himself smiling anyway. Sybill’s jokes were terrible, but they rarely failed to amuse him.

“Black arrived shortly after we did. He brought several grass imps for the front yard and, apparently, a plan to use the Fidelius Charm. He stayed.” Severus’ mind raced suddenly, and he grappled with a new wave of gut-grinding failure. He ought to have thought of this at the time, but his stupid rabbit brain was certainly no help. “It would have been brilliant if we’d had the Potters keep for the Longbottoms and the Longbottoms keep for the Potters.” It was the same thing Black had been claiming to achieve by staying with the Potters, only much better. Severus sighed, fighting back feelings of inadequacy and regret and loneliness. “It took nearly two months to set the charm.”

A week later the Potter’s were dead. Two days after that Severus had been scooped up and flung into Azkaban. He tried to think back to his time there. He had been near Black; remembered walking past the man howling in his cell. Had he spoken to Black? He didn’t remember. He had gotten off easy with the Dementors; Severus had never had very much happiness to lose. Still, the whole experience had been wretched and addling…

_Had_ he spoken to Black?

It was certainly possible, but the memory was gone, if it had ever existed. He did remember Black screaming into the night: ‘A week! A bloody week!’ and ‘TRAITOR!’ and _‘Why now?’_ Severus turned the words over in his head. A week to wait, Severus a traitor to the death eaters, Voldemort destroyed, and Black captured so soon…

But why even wait for the Fidelius Charm to be set? What was the point? It hadn’t mattered when Black was a deranged slaughterer. 

But it should have, shouldn’t it?

Severus had not known until later how long he had stood there pouring energy into the collapsing house, but Black had returned. He could have let the house fall on Harry when he had spooked Severus into transforming, but he hadn’t. Had he known the jig was up when Voldemort exploded and immediately set to covering his tracks?

“We’d gone out that night. I thought we were followed, until I was told that Black had betrayed them as Secret Keeper. I don’t remember him slipping away, but we were surrounded by people in costume. Any one of them could have been his contact.”

Sybill reached out, gently turning over Severus’ hand. “You’re holding on to that story very tightly.” She ran her thumb over the crescents dug into his palm. “Why?”

Why, indeed?

What did it matter if Black were one step less the monster?

_If_ it was true. Black’s guilt or innocence was still a matter of _if_. Dumbledore could be as short-sighted and gullible as the rest of them, especially about his chosen Gryffindors.

“ _If… IF_ Black is to be believed, everything is different.”

He received a very unimpressed look. “Lily and James Potter will still be dead. Harry will still be an orphan. Voldemort will still be out there. You will still bear the mark. We will all still eventually die.” The buttons deftly conquered, Sybill pushed up his sleeve. She covered the anemic ghost of the brand on his arm with a cool palm. “The truth will still be true.”

The glass in the sash rattled as the wind turned, breaking the loaded silence that swirled between them.

The truth was true whether Severus knew it or not. Whether he accepted it or not. Denial had never helped him before.

“Lupin claims…” Severus sighed, rubbing his face with his free hand. “Black claims that he convinced Potter to covertly change Secret Keepers at the last moment. He believed, essentially, that since Peter Pettigrew was an objectively terrible choice for Secret Keeper that no one would suspect him. According to Black” —and Lupin and Dumbledore and PotterGrangerWeasley— “it was Pettigrew that betrayed both him and the Potters.”

“And you.”

That was the rub, wasn’t it? Severus had been there, whether anyone but Lily had known it, and he had been betrayed as well. He’d been played for the fool. Black had looked him in the eye, promised help and brought it, allowed Severus to hide from the quick temper of Rubeus Hagrid; and all that time he had been lying with Severus was none the wiser.

He could not even begin to describe the depth and breadth of anger and frustration that lit in him. He had fought with Black against a horde of sacrificial sheep; innocents they were not, but they were still malleable and might have been turned. Even the dark lord wasn’t so cavalier with his forces, if only because they were smaller in number than he wanted.

Unless…

_Unless_ …

Black’s gaze had met his, terrified but resolute. Black’s eyes had been wide and clear; the thoughts of a traitor on the cusp of victory would have jumped out at Severus, but Black’s mind had been barren in the way of a warrior on the verge of battle. He hadn’t had thoughts to think because—

“He didn’t know.” Severus looked up into Sybill’s eyes. Again, he whispered, “Black didn’t know.”

Sybill smiled sadly. “Neither did you.”

“No,” Severus breathed, “I didn’t.”

Before Severus could give himself a proper razing, Sybill tucked his hair behind his ear. “The future can never be planned or impeded, and rarely seen.”

Sybill turned once again to the window. Beads of hail pinged off the glass. Severus was suddenly grateful he hadn’t stayed in Oklahoma after completing his mastery. He might have escaped the war, but no wizard could escape the weather. It was hard to decide if the constant threat of tornadoes, baseball-sized hail, and blizzards was worse than a, for him, short-lived holy war.

Of course, it wasn’t over, was it?

“If I had listened, we might have Pettigrew in hand.” He had been so… vindicated to hear Lupin admit the sordid doings of the Marauders that Severus had forgotten that he had walked in on the middle of something. And that there might be _more_. 

Poor form for a seasoned spy.

“Hindsight.”

Severus shot Sybill a glance. She presented a tempting target, lounged over the arms of her chair and gazing dozily at the ice beating itself to death against the staffroom window.

“Tart.”

Sybill choked on a giggle. “Pillock.”

Biting his lips shut did not stop a smile from escaping for long. “Wench.”

“Milksop!”

“Mooncalf!”

They surely sounded like heathens, but it felt good to laugh. So help them, if the Headmaster heard, but at least the students were gone for the summer.

“Ninnyhammer!” Sybill managed through her undignified, wheezy laugh.

“Saltimbanco!”

“Oh, now that’s just uncalled for.” Sybill threw a fistful of glitter and sparks at him.

“Is it?” Severus shot a jet of static into her hair. “I suppose your gypsy predictions serve some venerated purpose obscured by the clouded minds of us mere mortals?”

Sybill folded her hands on her stomach, ignoring his cheeky grin in favor of the weathery cinema outside. “The mind can only see what it is willing to see.”

She was right, of course. Severus twisted himself into a position where he could comfortably watch the trees waving angrily at the sky between grumbles of lightning. He briefly considered becoming Jack the rabbit but decided against it. Professor McGonagall would not be fooled, and neither would the Headmaster. He settled instead for joining Sybill’s quest to discover what his mind was willing to see beyond the staffroom window.


End file.
